Imagine waking up one day to find that virtually every activity you engage in outside your immediate family has become a "paid for" experience. It's all part of a fundamental change taking place in the nature of business, contends bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin. On the horizon looms the Age of Access, an era radically different from any we have known.

Rifkin argues that the capitalist journey, which began with the commodification of goods and the ownership of property, is ending with the commodification of human time and experience. In the future, we will purchase enlightenment and play, grooming and grace, and everything in between. "Lifestyle marketing" is the buzz in the commercial world as more and more consumers become members of corporate-sponsored clubs and participate in corporate-sponsored activities and events. People are even living out their lifestyles in planned commercial residential communities. The business of business, therefore, is no longer about exchanging property but, rather, about buying access to one's very existence in small commercial time segments. In the Age of Access, Rifkin asks, will any time be left for relationships of a noncommercial nature?

Rifkin warns that when the culture itself is absorbed into the economy, only commercial bonds will be left to hold society together. The critical question posed by The Age of Access is whether civilization can survive when only the commercial sphere remains as the primary arbiter of human life.

Until then, the right’s best guide to the age of access today may well be a globetrotting, Springsteen-loving baby boomer, the music industry critic Bob Lefsetz. Lefsetz’s is a Tocquevillian gold mine of aphorisms about access — the product of a lifetime of experience in the old sense of custom and habit and hard-won knowledge, not the new sense of one-off events.

Policy reforms can beat back the culture of elite patronage, but restarting a tradition of ownership is another matter. The task for lovers of liberty is a cultural one — to push back against Americans’ yearning for the fleeting sense of entitlement that comes with renting access. Unhappily, however, the wisdom-loving aristocrat’s appreciation for non-attachment is a harder sell than a sybaritic adventurism once restricted to a dedicated class of decadent nobles. That is why the political case for broad-based private ownership is essential to the future of freedom. In a democratic age, the experiential jolt of ersatz exclusivity is a drug of choice for millions who fear they are likely to lose in the competition of all against all. Our shared sense of political insignificance contributes more to our cultural conditioning than is commonly understood. Reasonably yet blindly, liberals are still congratulating themselves that more young people today reject the materialistic appeal of upward mobility. Now is the time for political conservatives to reveal the true cost of the age of access: it is harder than ever to lift yourself up without buying into a corrupt system you can never hope to change.

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At the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products considers the likely public health impact of raising the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products. The report reviews the existing literature on tobacco use patterns, developmental biology and psychology, health effects of tobacco use, and the current landscape regarding youth access laws, including minimum age laws and their enforcement. Based on this literature, the report makes conclusions about the likely effect of raising the minimum age to 19, 21, and 25 years on tobacco use initiation. The report also quantifies the accompanying public health outcomes based on findings from two tobacco use simulation models. According to the report, raising the minimum age of legal access to tobacco products, particularly to ages 21 and 25, will lead to substantial reductions in tobacco use, improve the health of Americans across the lifespan, and save lives. Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products will be a valuable reference for federal policy makers and state and local health departments and legislators.

America the Beautiful Passes (U.S. National Park Service)

The two fields are AGE and DOB.

Fact: EA Access just keeps getting bigger and better

タイトル： The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-For Experience：AGE OF ACCESS